Winter VISION Letter from Lisa

Hello, parents and friends! We at The Children's House hope you and yours are enjoying a wonderful holiday together. I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your support and involvement in our growing school, and to share our thoughts for the spring and a bit of our vision for the coming years.

Like Dr. Montessori’s first school in Rome (“Casa de Bambini” or “Children’s House”), we consider ourselves to be a real family at The Children's House. We care for and support your children as if they were our own, and we're thankful for the opportunity to welcome them each morning.

Our Spring semester will bring a few changes. Miss Shannon, our Primary Assistant in Miss Denise's community, will be leaving us to take a full-time position teaching art at the school her children attend. We are sad to see her go and we wish her the very best! Miss Shannon promises to visit often. As we look toward next year's program and as the children in Mr. Leonard's community become "afternooners" we have decided to be more flexible with the Primary classrooms and transition to one Primary community. Miss Denise and Mr. Leonard will work with assistant Miss Melanie to continue to ensure each child gets individual guidance and attention. We will benefit from the flexibility of having an extra room to work with individuals or small groups. As with everything, we will let the children be our guides as they work within our new structure.

Our main focus for the next two years will be on building our Upper Elementary program and developing a first-class education for our children aged 9 -12, as well as on improving and growing our already established Primary and Lower programs. We anticipate a similar enrollment next year (around 60 students) and look forward to perfecting our current programs to ensure the foundation we need to move ahead.

Our Upper Elementary staff and children are settling in to their new space and developing a solid routine to their day. In mid-Spring, our upper children will join together with Carolyn Barron Montessori School's Upper Elementary community to attend Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. We will continue to offer an Upper Elementary Program for ages 9 - 12 in the 2014-2015 school year and in the years to come.

In creating the Upper Elementary, The Children's House fulfills a pledge to all its current students and parents. We continue in our quest to become a premier institution in our category while maintaining the highest possible standards. We will work to fulfill all Common Core/Georgia State requirements, and we pledge to go beyond to best prepare our students for their middle and high school years. We are confident that our graduates will easily be qualified to make eventual switches as necessary, having benefited from everything a complete Montessori education provides.

Although we are proud and excited to have introduced an Upper Elementary this school year, this is only an initial step. We sincerely hope to excel and gradually establish a full range Montessori experience from preschool to high school. By 2017, we hope to build a new facility designed just for us in the new phase of Serenbe. We plan for this new facility to house two Primary levels, two Lower Elementary level communities, and an Upper Elementary. Our sights are set on building a strong, solid foundation on which to expand, and once we are more established, we intend to add a middle school program, called "Erdkinder", for ages 12-15. We will launch our capital campaign at the start of the 2014-2015 school year.

Please feel free to contact me by telephone or by email. I will be more than happy to answer any of your questions or listen to any of your concerns.